


One of the lost ones

by Inkfire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, F/M, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 03:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkfire/pseuds/Inkfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was left in Bad Wolf Bay, the second time - a man who didn't know who he was, and a girl who didn't know who she wanted. Rose/Ten II, half-sweet, half-angst, I suppose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of the lost ones

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty Rose/Ten II this time, because I love them, and yet they are just so… bizarre. Fic is named after a line from the Nightwish song _Nemo_. Enjoy!

She slams him into a wall, hands fisted too tight around his jacket, lips fierce in desperation. He kisses back, hard. Something is racing madly in his chest: one heart, he knows, but still it feels like two. He grips her, pulls her against him, into him until they stand as one lost entity – dizzy from the claims of a faraway world, from blurred identities, uncertainty.

"Doctor," she actually gasps, and they freeze.

The word is out; they can't take it back. It rings like a stab into the air. He can tell she doesn't know whether to apologize, or blame him for those impossible circumstances.

"No," he says. It is the last thing he wishes to admit, and so he spits it hastily, looking away from her face. He _feels_ like the Doctor though. New, yet old, and so very lost. The DoctorDonna, born from the insecure and the incredible: it sounds and feels like fate, meaningful in a way that makes him want to scream. Or maybe he should laugh, instead, at the sheer oddity of this – of what he is. Not quite human, not quite Time Lord.

"Don't," Rose says, and touches his face hesitatingly. She is torn too, he can tell, and it makes it all worse, because he is and isn't the person she wants. He wonders if they'll ever get over that simple fact, or if it will come back again and again to hit them in the face.

"Guess you'll have to figure out how to call me," he attempts to joke. It falls flat; he looks away, with a sharp surge of bitterness. She doesn't, just traces his cheekbone slowly with a finger, as though discovering the features all over again. That hand drifts down and hovers until she is brushing his lips, and biting hers hard. It feels right yet wrong, and mostly so confusing. But after all, he thinks, what can they do but play the cards they have been dealt, live the splinters of life left to them?

"Are you okay?" he asks in a low voice, and she nods with what seems to be conviction. Of course she might just be pretending for his sake. Still – having him must be much better than having nothing at all but memories.

"Yeah, I am. You?" she whispers back uncertainly.

He has no clue: the two halves that created him left him behind without a second glance, almost as a parting gift – and before they went, made it ever so clear that he really wasn't _them_ , like they weren't _him_ , leaving him quite achingly alone. His head is full and empty at the same time, his temples are ringing with beats he cannot even properly make out, and his future holds nothing but blurry shapes, no true promises but the memory of genocide and the relentless quest for the point of him. He ponders all of that, then looks at Rose.

_She_ is Rose, without doubt or compromise. She is that woman who has travelled the stars and been lost, left, stranded, that woman who came back and had to go again. She is the Doctor's Rose, and yet the Doctor left her with him. Perhaps it means that it's all right for him to belong with her, whoever he might really be.

It also could mean that in a way, somehow, the Doctor trusts him with what he holds precious.

He inclines his head tentatively, then leans forward in the same move, kisses her and squeezes his eyes shut. All he knows is that he exists, really. He is the there and now, alive, with her.

All the rest is history to be written.


End file.
